"About two weeks later I met the head of the secret police department in the same café. He said to me:
"'Do you know what has happened to that woman—Susanna Raynal?'
"'I haven't seen her since then,' I replied.
"'You will never see her again,' he said. 'She has been shot.'
"And then he told me how the police had shadowed her and her lover, how some one who had made her acquaintance recently gave her a letter of introduction to the Ministry of War. She wanted to help the Austrian carry certain documents out of France and wished to get a special letter from the Minister of War permitting her to take what she called 'manuscripts' to her friends in Switzerland.
"She came to the Ministry of War with her lover. They were taken to a room, where they met an officer who told her that he would be glad to arrange the matter for her. Then the police did what is usually done in such cases. The officer walked out of the room for a short time, leaving on the table near them a number of important-looking documents. The man took some of these documents, and after the officer had returned and had given them the letter they asked for they went away.
"On the following day they reached Bellegarde, the Franco-Swiss frontier. They were searched, and the papers taken from the War Department were found on the woman. Within one hour both were shot. She met her death bravely. She held the man by the hand and tried to brace him up. He was crying helplessly and hysterically....
"A few days ago I received information that Lieutenant Louis Raynal, the husband of the woman who was executed in Bellegarde, fell on the battlefield recently. He passed away without learning of the tragedy that had befallen his home.
"He died in defense of his fatherland, which his wife, through her blind love for a spy, had endeavored to betray. Perhaps as he was dying of his wounds, his last thoughts and prayers were for his home and for his wife." (Told by Herman Bernstein in the New York American.)
V—STORIES OF THE MILITARY SECRETS